Microsoft chief Satya Nadella earned $84 million in 2014

That amount, for the 2013-2014 fiscal year, included a base salary of $919,000, along with a bonus of $3.6 million, as well as stock options worth $79.8 million -- though he can't exercise those options until 2019, the filing reported.

Nadella, 47, who took over from Steve Ballmer in February at the head of the US software giant, has been at the center of a controversy since early October over his comments at a conference in Arizona.

At the conference, on women in computing, Nadella stunned the audience when he answered a question by saying that women, instead of asking for a raise, should just trust "that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along."

He reportedly went on to contend that women who don't ask for pay raises have a "superpower" in the form of "good karma, that'll come back."